PSYCO104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Limbic System, Motivation, Temporal Lobe

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCO104
• Professor: Michele Moscicki

Document Summary

Emotion : a positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity. Arousal and emotions happen at the same time. Cognitive arousal appraises the emotion you feel about a certain thing. Anger or fear, same experience -- different appraisal. Appraisal: evaluation of the emotion-relevant aspects of a stimulus. Stimuli that make up a car metal/plastic. But all of those elements moving towards you make it a threat. Emotional information follows two pathways in the brain: Will feel threatened before threat is consciously registered. Slow pathway: thalamus cortex amygdala. Experience emotion: more amygdalar activity, less cortical activity. Amygdala is evolutionarily ancient whereas the cortex is recent. Universality hypothesis: emotional expressions have the same meaning for everyone. Remote tribes could easily point out the 6 emotions. Expressions made by people who are congenitally blind even though they"ve never seen these expressions on others faces. Babies - two days old and will still make universal expressions.